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How to Build Economical, Long-lasting Tomato Baskets

Planted May 27, 2001
Last tended to on October 15, 2024
Reading time: 3 minutes

by Mike Dunton

There are numerous methods, limited only by personal preference and imagination, for keeping tomato plants off of the ground. This step-by-step article presents a simple, cost effective solution for creating a large number of baskets. These are much sturdier than the wire hoop baskets available at local hardware stores and garden centers in the spring, and work well for plants with determinate habits, as well as with indeterminate varieties when anchored to a post.

The materials that you will need are a roll of heavy gauge, woven wire field fence, a pair of sturdy pliers, bolt cutters, and a pair of good work gloves.

The roll shown here is 330 feet in length and purchased at Home Depot for $67.00 in the summer of 2001. [NOTE: The same material, from Home Depot had increased to $309, as of 10/15/24.]

Procedure For Construction:

Step 1: Roll out the wire fencing and using bolt cutters, cut to length.

Here is a stack of pieces that have been cut to length.

Step 2: Use pliers to bend the ends into a hook-shape.

Step 3: Hook the ends together.

Step 4: Crimp one end …

Step 5: … Then Crimp the other end. Repeat until all ends are connected.

Step 6: Here are the finished baskets.

Step 7: Baskets in place over a row of young plants.

These baskets can be made in any diameter by varying the length of fence section that you use. Typically 24 to 30 inch diameter baskets meet most requirements. The fencing material itself will determine the height. These baskets are 48 inches tall which is perfect for dwarf and determinate varieties.

Additionally, for our farm in the Pacific Northwest, they do fine for most indeterminate varieties. If it is a particularly fast growing vine laden with fruit, we will often use T-posts for more support. (Refer to the addendum below for more information.)

Addendum / Update 10/15/24 - We have now been using these baskets, the very ones we made in 2001, every year, for nearly twenty-five years! We have certainly gotten our money’s worth out of them and only a handful are showing any signs of failing. We expect to get another decade out of them.

I would point out that they are only subjected to the elements for about one half of the year. We are disciplined about cleaning them up and storing them under cover in a shed as part of our fall garden clean up ritual.

An additional comment would be that we have learned that under very heavy loads, the baskets can collapse or blow over. As in the photograph below, we anchor them by using t-posts at the ends of the row and then an additional post about every third basket. We then use binder twine to connect them to the row of posts.

Along with baskets and posts, due to the shear number of tomatoes that we grow, we also heavily use the “Florida Weave” method of trellising plants. It is not that it is superior in any particular way, but the baskets do take up a considerable amount of storage space and require a lot of handling. With the Florida Weave method, we only have to store the T-posts over winter.

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